Logos are an essential part of any business; they’re the bright face that greets your consumer and the signature that makes you memorable. Having a solid and unique logo could be the difference between being the most popular in the market and the second in line. When you sit down to create a logo for your small business, here are five important things to remember. 1. Keep it simple. A good logo is basic, uncluttered, and has the right combinations of colors. Choosing the right colors can help your business. That is why many restaurants use the color red in their company logos, as it is a color that makes people hungry or think of food. 2. Attract some attention. Create your company logo with the purpose of grabbing the attention of those quickly passing by. Make your logo’s image something that forces people to take notice of it. One or two colors or symbols are usually enough. Remember, a fast moving car on a freeway isn’t going to have time to see all the details of an overly cluttered or super colorful logo. 3. Be creative. Your goal is to make your company’s logo design so unique and publicly recognizable that wherever it is seen, the public mind will instantly register your product, your company name, and assign that logo image to your business. It is then that the visual connection has been skillfully shaped inside the public mind. Even small toddlers recognize the capital ‘C’ and ‘N’ sitting side-by-side, in black and white boxes, as the logo of Cartoon Network. Just try to scroll through the television...

Fear is a very real thing, and it’s reasonable to be fearful when you take on something as daunting as running a home business. Being afraid doesn’t mean you’re not brave. However, fear that isn’t managed affects your actions and decisions, and can be detrimental to your success as a business owner. Here are four different ways fear influences your ability to run a business: You won’t take profitable risks. If you’re afraid, you’re less likely to be daring. Running a home business is a daring experience. Much like a stock trader who holds their stocks too tight, you’ll never prosper if you never take a chance. This can mean making investments you’re unsure about to improve your business, or reducing the prices of your products to draw in more customers, or changing the entire look of your website. This could all go very wrong, but it could also go very right. You must be willing to take risks. Your work will suffer from the stress. If you’re more worried about making your bills than you are making your business successful, your attention will be on the money and not the product. Consumers can tell the difference. If your product is suffering, then your profits are suffering, and you’ve fulfilled your own worse fear. You cannot let the stress of your needs affect the way you run your business. If there is actually something to be improved, then improve it, but make sure you’re doing so from a professional perspective and not a fear-based one. Your attitude will change. Say you’re intimidated by the thought of people not taking...

Everyone fails. If you haven’t failed, then you haven’t tried. Failure is never something to be ashamed of, as long as you’re learning from it, and it absolutely must be dealt with. You cannot learn and move on until you address your mistakes. So when you’re at the bottom of the barrel, remember these things: Allow yourself time to take it in. When you’re faced with failure, you’re often flooded with a wash of negative emotions that compel you to catch all the broken pieces before they hit the ground. However, rash decisions lead to greater failure. Take the time to walk away from the situation and breathe. Eat something, get a drink, read a book – fire is not raining from the sky, you can benefit from a renewed perspective. Then come back and evaluate the situation. Realize it’s not the end of the world. There are very few things in life that are a complete “end game” with no hope of rebuilding. Yes, maybe you financially bankrupted your company, but what is bankruptcy? A do-over. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s not the end of the world. Henry Ford filed bankruptcy, and yet Ford trucks are in high demand! Look at in it bite-sized pieces. Now that you’re evaluating your situation, don’t overwhelm yourself with the whole elephant at once. Stop and break it apart into chucks you can handle – what is one element of the failure? What repercussions does that have? Alright, what’s another portion to the failure? What is the punishment from that? Plot out the issue and see what the real odds are. Remember...

Budding entrepreneurs are everywhere, and small businesses are sprouting up left and right. However, over half of new businesses will fail in the first year. There are ways to avoid this, and it’s by learning from other’s mistakes. Here are five reasons why new businesses fail: They get into the wrong market. The service they offer doesn’t have a high enough demand to pay for their expenses, let alone lead them into success. Or, just as damaging, they get into a market that is already monopolized. You can’t spring up a grocery store next to Walmart and expect any sort of prosperity; smaller businesses don’t have the financial backing like large businesses, so your prices and services can’t out-match them. The owners make it too personal Business owners let their emotions get involved, and they end up giving deals to friends, and driving off customers they don’t like, but who are paying well. They keep bad employees and poor suppliers. This is incredibly inefficient if you’re looking to profit in your work or see any range of growth for your business. Business owners should not let their own emotions cloud their judgment. There’s no emergency fund. Bad things happen to good businesses. If a businesses’ money is stretched too far, completely dependent on smooth waters to stay afloat, you can count on at least one wave coming along to capsize it. Being in debt with a business is one of the most common sources of failure, because then personal life bleeds over to compensate and owners find themselves in complete debt — or they simply drop the business. Have...

They say there’s nothing new under the sun. This is especially true in the marketing realm, where business owners are constantly at work to come up with something fresh and engaging. It can be overwhelming, and it’s especially tempting to look to others’ ideas when creating something of your own. The trouble comes when the line between drawing inspiration and stealing is called into question. Should you not reference anyone at all? Or is it alright to look for inspiration? The Dangers of Copying: You can be sued. It’s called plagiarism, and it sucks. If you’re mirroring a logo, a website design, ect., too closely, then you’ll run into some very real legal issues. If you remodel your website to be the same look as Amazon, it doesn’t matter if you make the font a blue instead of a black – people can tell the difference and you’re breaking copyrighting laws. You won’t stand out as original. Originality is very important when making a name for your business. No one said you had to reinvent the wheel, but you make an impression upon potential customers in how you present yourself. If your first foot forward is clearly too similar to another business, then customers won’t think, “Hey, that’s a catchy slogan.” They’ll think, “That is such a rip-off.” It could result in your business looking low quality and cheap – a fatal blow. Advertising will be harder. Your business needs to have a unique flavor. If something about your business engages the customer — your name, logo, slogan – then you’re sticking in their mind. That’s the goal of...